Miharayasuhiro Spring 2017 Menswear on Bessd

Miharayasuhiro Spring 2017 Menswear

Karlheinz Weinberger’s documentary record of mid-century Swiss youth doing their utmost to dress like Americans was a powerful influence at Mihara Yasuhiro’s debut London show today. The relocated-from-Paris Japanese designer chose a faded bowling alley as his venue; “King Creole” and other in-his-pomp Elvis numbers made up the preamble soundtrack; and when they came out, the models, male and female, used the lanes as their runway.

The closing look’s oversize cowboy belt, horseshoe pendant, and bandana ties were a very literal acknowledgment of the DIY USA style of the teenagers Weinberger discovered, as were the bowling shirts, hand-daubed denim, and a pair of beautiful rivet-seamed oversize jackets. But for this fictional Americana-obsessed youth tribe, christened “No Club Lone Wolf,” Yasuhiro incorporated more contemporarily fundamental items of Rebel Youth attire, too. Long nylon rain jackets and souvenir bombers were bisected by zippers as outsized as that buckle. Hoodies were punctured or patched with DIY emblems. Yasuhiro very literally explored the line of symmetry between different generations’ urge to stamp their own imprint on the American archetype by dividing pieces straight down the middle: one pair of pants’ right leg was wide raw denim, while it’s left was a cargo pocket chino. Above this two-part trouser, a silk bowling shirt was fused to a long-hemmed flannel check work shirt. A denim swing skirt and lace-hemmed slip dresses fused with bowling shirts or souvenir jackets were among the womenswear highlights in a collection whose rigorous fabrication was matched by its imaginative richness.